Wednesday, 15 August 2012

Yesterday I lost my job - actually no that is being dramatic, I didn't lose my job - I got made "temporarily redundant". They can't afford me (nobody ever could) but I can go back to my post when they have further investors. Which is great - a holiday with no fixed end date - except I'm not being paid and with no guarantee that I will have a job at the end of it.

I did what most self respecting people my age do when faced with financial crisis and considered applying for another degree. That way I wouldn't have to worry about anything else for the next 4 years whilst you lovely tax payers pay my way through self discovery - but I'd completely lose my last shred of dignity in the process. I left my degree in the first place to supposedly follow my "dream" of writing - and thus far it hasn't worked out. However, post 3rd gin shot after being "sacked" I realised that I am (almost) 24 years old and I haven't yet written my life story - how incredibly unpretentious of me! I clearly have an inferiority complex.

In the height of my self-pity I got to be thinking how the
hell anyone actually survives without going completely insane. I would insert
some profound psychological study statistic at this point or reference some socialist
literature to emphasise how capitalism, commercialism, food modification
etcetera is making us all globally sick but I’d be kidding myself into a false
sense of intelligence. I am no sociologist, and despite being a lesbian - I am neither an expert feminist, but it doesn't take a real genius to work out that there is something fundamentally wrong. I don’t need to be well read to understand these things,
simply navigating myself through the twenty first century as a young woman is
as much of an education about “life” that I will ever need. Thus the gin
infused notion emerged that I must take all my worldly knowledge and
immediately set pen to paper. You could write a "how not to life your life" book based on my mental health record and I am by no means anything out of the ordinary. Just your standard young woman that has absolutely no idea what she should be doing with her life and why it bothers her so much.

There are so many books out there now recounting troubled young womens recovery (or not) from a plethora of mental illnesses and I'm not about to write another one of those. No I see your issues and raise it by 16 others that I have been through - as have a shockingly high number of other people my age. Nobody would benefit from reading another of those. This is not to be a self help guide, an inspiration to others, an autobiography, a sociological rant - more a personal experiement I guess and if it takes some kind of vaguely interesting and tangible structure, I'll develop into a satirical novel about why "life" is actually just a big puppet show anyway. Whatever it will save me a lot of time in cathartic therapy.